Doodles

‘Bout this time of year, every year, I begin the hunt for my encore. In a better world, or more properly if I was a better organized man, I would already know. But I don’t. I never do. And thus, the hunt. You see, every year at the bookstore I read Truman Capote’s A Christmas …

I’m a primitive. Now, in my case, you could take that more than one way. There’s my redneck pedigree, my preference for white socks, the caveman beard. I like steak, prefer 19th Century novels to 21st Century anything, and when I think I’m being flirtatious, the husband asks if I’m hungry, or angry or . …

I’m remembering my grandmother’s vacation purse. You know the one, embroidered straw, maybe a palm tree, or a red lobster on one side and a blue crab on the other, maybe “Hawaiian” flowers. There was nothing to say Grandma had been anywhere much, but even if that purse was only from a summer road-trip, it …

I just don’t believe in the End of the World anymore. How many times has that been just around the corner? Never happens. I’m not saying it never will, but I don’t think it’s something on which anyone should still be counting. That gloomy Spenglerian habit of foreseeing The Decline of the West, The End …

Recently, a little resentful of the variability we laughingly call “summer” here in the Great North West, a cold tourist asked a bookseller in my hearing just what one could predict when stepping out in Seattle? “Crows,” replied my unruffled coworker. True enough. “Morning arises stormy and pale No sun, but a wannish glare” Now, …

“In a restless world like this is,” as the song used to say, our customers can always go . . . elsewhere. That’s what makes the loyal ones such a boon and a comfort, no? Well, find me a more faithful body of readers, a better bunch of folks and better customers than the Science …